Abstract
The oil and gas industry has a long standing initiative to develop and use the most environmental solutions in the exploration and recovery of oil and gas resources. As part of this continual effort, research is ongoing to create eco- friendly, virtually non-toxic and readily biodegradable base fluids, lubricants, emulsifiers to successfully complete drilling and completion requirements without causing any damage to the environment or other resources.
There is a significant volume of waste vegetable oil generated by the food and catering industry has no aromatic oil content, is virtually nontoxic and readily biodegradable and thus can be a potential source for the development of eco-friendly base fluids, lubricants, emulsifiers and spotting fluids to be in the forefront of best drilling practices This paper describes a set of newly developed green mud additives that have been synthesized using waste cooking oil generated by the food and catering industry. Recycling of the waste cooking oil not only provides a technical solution for the oil and gas industry, but also addresses the disposal problems of the food and catering industry.
Experimental results demonstrating the various applications of the newly developed green products indicate similar or better performance compared to the commercially available equivalent products used by the oil and gas industry. Hence, the newly developed products are viable alternatives for some of the imported non-ecofriendly or less eco-friendly oil-based products used for exploration and exploitation of oil and gas resources. Due to the replacement of equivalent imported products, these locally developed products will reduce the mud additive import cost significantly. On the other hand, due to the eco-friendly nature of the products, they will help explore and exploit oil and gas resources without any negative impact on other marine and terrestrial resources.
